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I have been giving presentations professionally since ~2007. The only thing I agree with is the end: "The most effective speeches and presentations sound as i

I have been giving presentations professionally since ~2007. The only thing I agree with is the end: "The most effective speeches and presentations sound as if they have been spoken, ad-lib, and not written down at all. Great presenters and speakers make it all sound so easy and so natural that one assumes it just pours out of them. It almost never does." You'll never see an amazing talk/brief/speech like described above, follow the formula outlined in the "How to organize a presentation." The "How to organize a presentation" is great for someone who has never given a presentation to be able to give a tolerable presentation. However going from tolerable to good takes a completely different pathway and most people never get there. I suggest if you're serious about being influential as a presenter you try an open mic for poetry, improv or standup comedy. You'll bomb probably, but the exercise is really important. Practice storytelling. Write more. Understand your audience before you even start building your presentation. There's so much to do that is never ending but at the end of the day you're trying to build a relationship with your audience so that they trust you and what you are trying to convince them of.

tootie 7y ago
My line of work requires a lot of time presenting. We typically tag team our presentations so experts are presenting their own slides. It definitely adds to the authenticity. Typically I'll write up slides relevant to the audience, but it's usually on topics that I already know inside and out and don't need to follow a script and can easily respond to questions and tangents. Then pass to another expert who can talk about their stuff with equal vigor. Speaking about something that's actually interesting is also hugely important. I think the exact inverse example is probably Donald Trump. He has little relevant expertise to his job and hasn't really bothered to learn much along the way. Instead, he speaks at length without a script and without breaking tempo unburdened by facts, experience or even coherence. Just a lot of confidence and a lot of emotion. And it evidently works really well for a lot of people.
- dkersten 7y ago
  I personally don't really like tag-team presentations. I'm sure it can be done really well, but in almost all talks I've ever watched (GDC, strangeloop, various language conferences) the switch between speakers always came across as distracting, hectic or jarring. Yes, I imagine they were rarely (or ever) as well practiced as you sound and I imagine that makes a huge difference and it sounds like you're doing it for the right reasons (so that the person talking is always talking about something they know about, certainly helps talks sound less artificial, as you say), my main point is that I don't think its good advice to tell people who aren't as well practiced because I find it often makes otherwise decent presentations not so great. Everything else you say sounds great, though :)
- joshuaheard 7y ago
  Scott Adams (Dilbert creator) has written several books on persuasion and persuasive techniques. He analyzes Trump's communication style very positively.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    Scott Adams isn't an expert on either persuasion generally or the domain in which Trump operates (writing a book doesn't make you an expert; ideally, being an expert would be related to having a book taken seriously, but being a celebrity can do that without any expertise.) Trump did a decent enough job at leveraging decades of Republican propaganda designed to create permanent unmet needs and resentments to support politicians permanently promising incremental steps in the direction of those needs, and cutting the legal out of the people making that offer by not nakedly offering the whole hog rather than incremental steps. But that's not a triumph of persuasion: the persuasion was done by decades of work by professional political propagandists; Trump was just meeting the already-radicalized Republican base where they'd been set up to be exploited.
    - lifeisstillgood 7y ago
      could you expand a bit? what are the unmet permanent needs
  - arrrg 7y ago
    I mean, it obviously works. That doesn’t tell you anything about its ethical or moral content, though.
  - TwoBit 7y ago
    Does he recommend lying so much? I'm not sure how to categorize Trump's lying. He just says whatever he wants, completely made up.
    - nordsieck 7y ago
      > I'm not sure how to categorize Trump's lying. He just says whatever he wants, completely made up. My charitable view of Trump's lying is this: He is one of the first high level public officials to take Scalia's opinion in Republican Party of Minnesota v White seriously > Campaign promises are, by long democratic tradition, the least binding form of human commitment. His speech is in essence poetry rather than prose; he focuses almost exclusively on evocative imagery and emotional impact and disregards facts as largely irrelevant to his audience. To my dismay, this is much more effective than I would like it to be.
hnarn 7y ago
> You'll never see an amazing talk/brief/speech like described above, follow the formula outlined in the "How to organize a presentation." I strongly disagree, and I think the "How to Speak" lecture by Professor Patrick Winston of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology demonstrates this very well: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9F536001A3C605FC https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9F536001A3C605FC This is an example of a very structured presentation, but at no point did I feel bored or out of touch with the presenter because of it.
- AndrewKemendo 7y ago
  Perhaps we watched a different lecture. I saw a person capture the audience's attention with an anecdote about the Military and then used that as a metaphor to empathize with the audience about why they should care. Then he immediately gave a compelling and comedic anecdote with some improvisation demonstrating that it's a skill you can learn, also empathizing with the audience to address fears. That he wrote an outline on the board is almost immaterial. Also, notable that this is an academic lecture, which would be expected to be more structured and the power dynamic of the speaker and the audience are already clear, the students are there to learn from the speaker in a somewhat subordinate way. Very different than a TED-style talk, VC pitch, company all call, PR event etc... where that format falls apart unless used very creatively like Dimitri Martin does in his comedy
tim333 7y ago
>sound as if they have been spoken, ad-lib This reminds me of a Boris Johnson speech story https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/06/my-boris-story/ https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/06/my-boris-story/ which is kind of ammusing. A slightly more extreme version.

tootie 7y ago

My line of work requires a lot of time presenting. We typically tag team our presentations so experts are presenting their own slides. It definitely adds to the authenticity. Typically I'll write up slides relevant to the audience, but it's usually on topics that I already know inside and out and don't need to follow a script and can easily respond to questions and tangents. Then pass to another expert who can talk about their stuff with equal vigor. Speaking about something that's actually interesting is also hugely important. I think the exact inverse example is probably Donald Trump. He has little relevant expertise to his job and hasn't really bothered to learn much along the way. Instead, he speaks at length without a script and without breaking tempo unburdened by facts, experience or even coherence. Just a lot of confidence and a lot of emotion. And it evidently works really well for a lot of people.

dkersten 7y ago
I personally don't really like tag-team presentations. I'm sure it can be done really well, but in almost all talks I've ever watched (GDC, strangeloop, various language conferences) the switch between speakers always came across as distracting, hectic or jarring. Yes, I imagine they were rarely (or ever) as well practiced as you sound and I imagine that makes a huge difference and it sounds like you're doing it for the right reasons (so that the person talking is always talking about something they know about, certainly helps talks sound less artificial, as you say), my main point is that I don't think its good advice to tell people who aren't as well practiced because I find it often makes otherwise decent presentations not so great. Everything else you say sounds great, though :)
joshuaheard 7y ago
Scott Adams (Dilbert creator) has written several books on persuasion and persuasive techniques. He analyzes Trump's communication style very positively.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  Scott Adams isn't an expert on either persuasion generally or the domain in which Trump operates (writing a book doesn't make you an expert; ideally, being an expert would be related to having a book taken seriously, but being a celebrity can do that without any expertise.) Trump did a decent enough job at leveraging decades of Republican propaganda designed to create permanent unmet needs and resentments to support politicians permanently promising incremental steps in the direction of those needs, and cutting the legal out of the people making that offer by not nakedly offering the whole hog rather than incremental steps. But that's not a triumph of persuasion: the persuasion was done by decades of work by professional political propagandists; Trump was just meeting the already-radicalized Republican base where they'd been set up to be exploited.
  - lifeisstillgood 7y ago
    could you expand a bit? what are the unmet permanent needs
- arrrg 7y ago
  I mean, it obviously works. That doesn’t tell you anything about its ethical or moral content, though.
- TwoBit 7y ago
  Does he recommend lying so much? I'm not sure how to categorize Trump's lying. He just says whatever he wants, completely made up.
  - nordsieck 7y ago
    > I'm not sure how to categorize Trump's lying. He just says whatever he wants, completely made up. My charitable view of Trump's lying is this: He is one of the first high level public officials to take Scalia's opinion in Republican Party of Minnesota v White seriously > Campaign promises are, by long democratic tradition, the least binding form of human commitment. His speech is in essence poetry rather than prose; he focuses almost exclusively on evocative imagery and emotional impact and disregards facts as largely irrelevant to his audience. To my dismay, this is much more effective than I would like it to be.

hnarn 7y ago

> You'll never see an amazing talk/brief/speech like described above, follow the formula outlined in the "How to organize a presentation." I strongly disagree, and I think the "How to Speak" lecture by Professor Patrick Winston of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology demonstrates this very well: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9F536001A3C605FC https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9F536001A3C605FC This is an example of a very structured presentation, but at no point did I feel bored or out of touch with the presenter because of it.

AndrewKemendo 7y ago
Perhaps we watched a different lecture. I saw a person capture the audience's attention with an anecdote about the Military and then used that as a metaphor to empathize with the audience about why they should care. Then he immediately gave a compelling and comedic anecdote with some improvisation demonstrating that it's a skill you can learn, also empathizing with the audience to address fears. That he wrote an outline on the board is almost immaterial. Also, notable that this is an academic lecture, which would be expected to be more structured and the power dynamic of the speaker and the audience are already clear, the students are there to learn from the speaker in a somewhat subordinate way. Very different than a TED-style talk, VC pitch, company all call, PR event etc... where that format falls apart unless used very creatively like Dimitri Martin does in his comedy

tim333 7y ago

>sound as if they have been spoken, ad-lib This reminds me of a Boris Johnson speech story https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/06/my-boris-story/ https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/06/my-boris-story/ which is kind of ammusing. A slightly more extreme version.